Reclaiming feminine powerįor centuries, witch hunts realized male desire to control women’s bodies and social role. Yet even when there is no doubt that the cause of their emotion may be valid (rape for Medusa, while Wanda was forced to murder her own partner), victims’ anger is depicted as a threat to social peace. “You break the rules and become a hero? I do it and become the enemy. Strange seems to recognize an emotional double standard at the beginning of the film when Wanda makes the following comment to Dr. According to professor of political and social theory, Amia Srinivasan, this is injustice through the policing of emotions.ĭr. Victims of oppression feel pressurized to let go of their anger to appease discussions. That racist caricature of Serena Williams makes me so angry Women’s anger can also be racialized: for example, research about the reactions to Black women’s expressions of anger at work finds that “expressions of emotion are evaluated differently depending on demographics” and that racial stereotypes affect how people perceive anger in Black women.Īs cultural critic Roxane Gay asks: “ Who gets to be angry?” The same emotions expressed by minoritized groups are stigmatized. When expressed by the powerful, emotions are received as appropriate, noble even. Since the foundation of the western heroic mythology - and as far back as Homer’s Iliad (that begins with Achilles’ righteous anger) - literary tradition has given men the right to make productive use of their anger while negatively representing the angry woman. This is a reminder that menstrual blood has long been associated with female irrational anger, but also that female rage has often been pathologized, sometimes linked to hysteria. This scene refers to the cult horror film Carrie (1976) where Sissy Spacek’s character’s power and her subsequent killing spree is triggered by her menses and the shaming that she experiences as a result. Viewers are unsure whose blood it is, and no explanation is given. In another key scene, Wanda proceeds to systematically massacre the Avengers and appears dressed in a white shirt covered in blood, her face stained by red streaks. In ‘Carrie,’ the teenager’s power and killing spree follows her menses and shaming about it.‘
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